


A Cup of Kindness

by Polomonkey



Series: Summer Pornathon 2015 [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Captivity, Healing, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 21:32:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4580865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polomonkey/pseuds/Polomonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur and Merlin try to recover their lives after the unthinkable happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cup of Kindness

**Author's Note:**

> Written for week two of the pornathon, fulfilling my 'hurt/comfort' square for tropes bingo and my 'forced to participate in illegal/hurtful activity' square for H/C bingo. Thank you for reading!

It takes three weeks for the police to find them.

The room they’re being held in is small and cold. The bed is a single so they sleep curled up close to one another. Their clothes have been taken away.

Merlin cries himself to sleep every night. Most mornings he wakes up crying too.

Arthur doesn’t cry. Not when he first wakes up and realises he’s a captive of the very sex traffickers he’s been trying to arrest. Not when the boss and his men come into the room and strip him roughly. Not when they drag him down to a basement packed with leering faces and one pale, shaking man in the centre of it all. Not when they put a gun to his head and tell him to fuck the shaking man or they both die, right here, right now.

If he didn’t cry when he first pressed himself inside that trembling, terrified body, he won’t start now.

He might never be able to cry again.

The man’s name is Merlin and he was snatched from the street on the way home from his bar job. He’s only been here four days longer than Arthur. But four days may as well be a lifetime at the hands of Cenred King.

Cenred likes to put on shows, and they get taken back to the basement most days. In front of crowds of baying men, Cenred makes them do things that go beyond horror; things they’ll never talk about again, except in whispers on dark nights when the burden of keeping it all inside becomes too much.

They ride in the ambulance together when the rescue finally comes, because Arthur refuses to let Merlin go.

***

It takes three months for them to realise they can’t live apart. And so Merlin moves into Arthur’s flat.

The bed is a double but they still sleep curled up close. Arthur can’t stand stirring in the night and not feeling Merlin’s skin pressed up against his. He needs to always have some part of his body touching Merlin’s, to make sure he’s still there, that he hasn’t slipped away.

Merlin still wakes up crying most days. Arthur cradles his head and wipes the tears away with the pad of his thumb, soft as he can.

Arthur gets frozen sometimes: in the shower, at the sink, by the fridge; his entire body stiff and numb. When Merlin finds him, he rubs his back and talks quietly until Arthur can move again.

Arthur goes back to his job. He likes having something to do, likes feeling useful. His boss tries to keep him away from rape cases for a while but Arthur asks him not to. That’s where his help is needed most.

Merlin can’t go back to the bar; he’ll never be able to walk alone at night again. He turns his hand to illustration instead, sets up a desk in the living room and draws all day. There’s no real money in it, he might not be able to do it forever, but it works for now.

They don’t have company round much. They need a lot of silence and a lot of space.

They don’t have sex. Arthur can’t imagine ever wanting to do that again. Merlin says, _maybe, one day, who knows._

But they kiss, a lot, last thing before they go to sleep at night, first thing when they wake up in the morning. They kiss when Arthur leaves for work and they kiss when he gets home again. They kiss all the time, over nothing, and it’s simple, it’s wonderful, and nothing that happened to them in that basement can ruin it.

***

It takes three years for Merlin to leave the house unaccompanied. He walks to the park and back, then collapses inside the doorway the second he gets home. It’s easier the next time he tries it. It’s even easier the time after that.

It takes three years for Arthur to cry, and it happens at Christmas when some sentimental old film is playing on the TV. Merlin doesn’t say anything, just grips his hand tight. Arthur watches the people onscreen laugh together, a happy human throng, and lets the tears fall. He thinks about redemption, and what it means to trust another person completely, and how you pick up the pieces of a life shattered beyond imagining.

The family onscreen are singing Auld Lang Syne. Merlin’s hand is warm in his. Outside the snow is falling.


End file.
